Call center agents have been used to provide customer service and support. In a typical scenario, a call service agent is assigned to handle a call by an automatic call distribution system. Once a communication channel is established between the agent and the customer, voice communications over the operative communication network or networks can begin. However, providing live agents to respond to customer requests is a relatively expensive solution, particularly where enough agents are provided to ensure that wait times for customers are relatively short. Conversely, where the number of available agents is limited, in order to save on costs, the wait times experienced by customers seeking assistance can be excessive.
In order to minimize the amount of time that a live, and presumably expensive, human agent must devote to one-on-one interactions with individual customers, many contact centers try to utilize automated attendant and automated interactive voice response (IVR) systems or applications to satisfy customer needs.
A typical automated attendant application answers inbound calls by presenting a simple menu, such as, “Thank you for calling XYZ Corporation. If you know the extension of the person you are calling, please dial it now. For sales, press or say One. For repairs, press or say Two. For information about store hours or locations, press or say Three.” In general, the purpose of automated attendant systems is to permit callers to select the specific service or individual with which they wish to speak. Note that there is no automated ability for callers to enter data, ask questions, or select an option that was not presented by the menu.
In contrast with automated attendant applications, interactive voice response systems allow customers to call into a designated customer service telephone number and then conduct a wide variety of automated transactions. Illustratively, a typical IVR system maintained by an airline will allow customers to check schedules, check the number of “frequent flier” miles in their account, purchase tickets (either by credit card or by using “frequent flier” miles), make seat selections, check the anticipated arrival time of in-progress flights, and so on.
A problem with automated attendant systems and, to a much greater extent, IVR systems is that their menu structures tend to be very complicated, slow, non-intuitive, and hard to navigate. An especially frustrating problem for users is that they often take a wrong branch within the system's menu structure, don't realize the mistake until they have proceeded down a few more levels, and then are unable to navigate back to where they need to be.
Although contact centers that present IVR front ends often provide customers with the option of speaking to a live agent, the option to choose to speak with a live agent is often hidden and/or not presented until the caller has progressed several steps into the application. Indeed, in order to limit the number of customer requests that require the participation of a live agent, IVR systems increasingly omit an option to speak with a live agent, or make the option to speak with a live agent difficult to access. As a result, customers will often be frustrated and unhappy when they finally get to an agent. An even more troublesome outcome for the contact center is that customers may be motivated to hang-up and take their business elsewhere.
Analysis of IVR usability failures such as these reveals three interesting characteristics: (1) the IVR interactions in which user errors are most common are the portions in which customers are trying to specify the reason for the call, (2) a live contact center agent is not available to customers until after the customer has had an unsatisfactory experience with IVR, and (3) the IVR interactions that tend to go smoothly are the ones that occur after the caller's needs have been correctly identified.
A need exists for a system that increases customer satisfaction without increasing the amount of time that a live agent must spend with the customer.